Two fundamentally different switching technologies exist that enable digital communications. The first type, circuit-switched networks, operate by establishing a dedicated connection or circuit between two points, similar to public switched telephone networks(PSTN). A telephone call causes a circuit to be established from the originating phone through the local switching office across trunk lines, to a remote switching office and finally to the intended destination telephone. While such circuit is in place, the call is guaranteed a data path for digitized or analog voice signals regardless of other network activity. The second type packet-switched networks, typically connect computers and establish an asynchronous "virtual" channel between two points. In a packet-switched network, data, such as a voice signal, is divided into small pieces called packets which are then multiplexed onto high capacity connections for transmission. Network hardware delivers packets to specific destinations where the packets are reassembled into the original data set. With packet-switched networks, multiple communications among different computers can proceed concurrently with the network connections shared by different pairs of computers concurrently communicating. Packet-switched networks are, however, sensitive to network capacity. If the network becomes overloaded, there is no guarantee that data will be timely delivered. Despite this drawback, packet-switched networks have become quite popular, particularly as part of the Internet and Intranets, due to their cost effectiveness and performance.
In a packet-switched data network one or more common network protocols hide the technological differences between individual portions of the network, making interconnection between portions of the network independent of the underlying hardware and/or software. A popular network protocol, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is utilized by the Internet and Intranets&gt;Intranets are private networks such as Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WAN). The TCP/IP protocol utilizes universal addressing as well as a software protocol to map the universal addresses into low level machine addresses. For purposes of this discussion, networks which adhere to the TCP/IP protocol will be referred to hereinafter "IP-based" or as utilizing "IP addresses" or "Internet Protocol address".
It is desirable for communications originating from a PSTN network to terminate at equipment in an IP-based network. Problems arise, however, when a user on a circuit-switched network tries to establish a communication link to a packet-switched data network, and vice versa, due to the disparity in addressing techniques among other differences used by the two types of networks. Accordingly, many of the services currently available on network are typically not available to communications originating on the other network.
Automatic call distribution (ACD) centers are one such service which has been used successfully on traditional circuit-switched networks. Typically, a number of human operators or "agents" are used to operate telephones or other terminating apparatus to answer incoming calls for a business entity. Such automatic call centers typically are used by companies which service large numbers of incoming calls for sales, support and customer ordering, etc. Generally, a traditional call center consists of routing and switching hardware and a plurality of terminating equipment located on the same PBX.
With the advent of Internet telephony, the ability to receive incoming communications originating from packet-switched data processing networks, such as the Internet, has given rise for the need to 1) set up similar call distribution facilities for packet-switched calls, 2) adapt existing call distribution technology to computer telephony and, 3) create automatic call distribution centers which are capable of accepting calls originating from both circuit-switched networks and packet-switched networks.
Further, the success and efficiency of prior automatic call distribution centers to handle the incoming call load is related to the ability to efficiently route incoming communications. As operator reserves change, e.g. shifts change, operators service calls, operator absenteeism, the performance of the system changes dynamically. As such, the physical configuration of the automatic call distribution hardware, and the proximity of the operators and supervisors to operate the hardware, has placed limitations on the flexibility and, therefore, the efficiency with which traditional circuit-switched automatic call distribution systems perform.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system which is capable of implementing traditional automatic call distribution services for communications originating over packet-switched networks.
A further need exists for an automatic call distribution system which is capable of receiving incoming communications from both a packet-switched network and traditional circuit-switched networks.
In addition, a need exists for an automatic call distribution system in which agent operators and/or supervisors may be located in geographically different locations or over different network topologies while still appearing as a single virtual entity.
Yet another need exists for the ability to automatically queue incoming communications based on a number or criteria without requiring user input.
Still a further need exists for the ability to dynamically reorganize the virtual organization of agents within an automatic call distribution system to effectively deal with dynamic call loads and agent resources, etc.